Salt is a Pillar of Our Nuclear Future

The general facility layout for Terrestrial Energy’s Integral Molten Salt Reactor, showing the IMSR core-unit within its below-ground containment cavity, storage silos, separate steam generator and turbine areas, and delivery-removal area for new and used core units.TERRESTRIAL ENERGY

The Canadian government assessed the design to determine whether any obvious issues exist that would stop the licensing process and that should be resolved before the licensing process actually starts. Success at that stage showed that Terrestrial Energy is serious and has done their homework on what the regulator needs to approve their reactor design.

The key advantage of this GenIV reactor design is that it uses molten saltto carry the fuel as well as cool the system. At first glance, that might seem odd. But molten salt, with the uranium dissolved in it, can operate at low-pressure and doesn’t need chemical or mechanical driving forces which can cause problems.

The IMSR can be maintained and operated with relative simplicity, important for an industrial reactor with potential for global applications. The power plant can be sized from small to large. The reactor is in a permanently sealed modular core-unit, that includes multiple redundant heat exchangers and pumps (see figures). This whole unit is replaced periodically on a seven-year cycle resulting in little reactor down time.